Losing control of the data

Another day, another story about Facebook data. Ars Technica reports that Facebook is suing a South Korean app developer Rankwave, claiming the company misused data it received from Facebook. Rankwave creates mobile apps through which it obtained Facebook user data for 10 years.

All we know about this situation came from the Facebook press release, and it's not clear what the offense is. The article cited the violation as using the Facebook data to "create and sell advertising and marketing analytics and models". That's how Facebook uses the user data, same as why Facebook partners want access to user data.

One part of the press release rings very true: Facebook admits that it does not control the data once shared with third parties. Facebook lawyers demanded Rankwave do the following:

Provide a full accounting of Facebook user data in its possession;

Identify all individuals, organizations, and governmental entities to which it had sold, or otherwise distributed, Facebook user data;

Provide a full record of the access logs and permissions it had granted third parties to access the data;

Delete and destroy all Facebook user data after returning it to Facebook;

Provide Facebook with full access to all storage and related devices so that Facebook could confirm deletion and destruction of the data through an audit.

These all sound great but would any company, even Facebook, be able to deliver the above logs, reports, devices, etc.? Given how data are spread out in big networks of servers ("data clouds", "data lakes", etc.), this wishlist sounds like a fantasy.

In this new video, I talk about the data sharing ecosystem, why it is so hard to delete anything, and how companies lose control of the data. It's the flip side of speed and convenience. What is the price we're willing to pay?